Why Can't the Command-Line be More Standardized?

dschl asks: "Just because something does not appear to be broken, is no reason to leave it the way it is. Unix has been developed over the course of decades, and has several inconsistent legacy commands, for tools developed by different people at different times. I get tired of hearing some long-term unix users just tell newbies to "RTFM", and complain about how people do not want to use the command line. As a relative newbie, I have an problem with this: the command line is a *itch to learn. Once, when upgrading to a newer version of Gnome, I had to check (and upgrade) a dozen libraries. A part of life, and that did not bother me. However, a different flag argument was required to check each version number - this ranged from -v, -V, --V, -version, and so on. Why can't the following be done: have a standardized superset of flags for the most common and widespread options, such as verbose (-v), version (-V), recursive (-r), all (-a), force (-f). This could lead to a brutal transition period for those who use command line every day, but would ultimately make the command line more accessible (by lowering the learning curve, which would make it easier for people to see what a useful tool it really is). This would have to be a limited superset, in order to allow for a full range of non-common flag options for all commands. Would this be feasible / possible? Would it be worthwhile? "